


the edge keeps drifting

by Anonymous



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (it’s past self harm; nothing happens in the fic itself), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Andrew Minyard, Past Abuse, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Andrew doesn’t want things.He doesn’t need anything.If he did have a favourite place to be, though, it would be on top of Neil. When they’re both hard and Andrew kisses Neil with rough bites to his bottom lip whenever he thinks Neil deserves it, only then can Andrew briefly let himself fully appreciate how much he likes having the solid line of Neil’s body beneath him, how it’d be the perfect strong base to build a home on.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 10
Kudos: 157
Collections: Anonymous





	the edge keeps drifting

What someone thinks they want, need, or deserve don’t always have to be the same things, but as a concept it’s all connected and all equal levels of stupid.

Wanting or needing something is for people who don’t know how the real world works. Who have the mindset of a gullible child and, despite being old enough to know better, are embarrassing enough to not even try to hide their own stupidity.

Even the thought of it disgusts Andrew. 

And if people actually do ‘deserve’ things, if what goes around really does come around, then... well. He doesn’t know what the fuck a kid who gets hurt could have ever done to deserve it, unless the universe could just already tell what a disgusting waste of space they were, and everything really was all Andrew’s own fault even back then. Few things that have shown up to haunt Andrew from his past have ever been good, and nothing good he’s had and lost has ever returned to him later in life.

That is, until Neil Josten.

_“Quatre-vingt-dix-sept,”_ Neil murmurs sleepily next to him, stroking a fingertip gently across the white line of the last scar at the top of Andrew’s forearm.

“You sound like a fucking idiot when you talk like that,” Andrew says and stares forward at the wall in their room.

“Only when I speak French?” Neil murmurs and closes his eyes. “That’s some major improvement from what people usually think of me when I open my mouth.” The smartass lets his whole palm rest flat against Andrew’s skin instead, curling his hand gently around his forearm, then continues his soft caressing over Andrew’s scars with the pad of his thumb.

Andrew looks down at him, the sneer on his lips ready to leave him, but he stops it at the last second. Neil’s hair is a ruffled mess—partially for post shower reasons, even more so for post Andrew’s-grabby-hands reasons. Paired with his long lashes and how soft his freckled cheeks look right now, it almost makes Andrew want to linger in the thought of just how _pretty_ Neil is like this. Here, almost asleep in bed, resting with his head half on top of Andrew’s thigh. Andrew stops those thoughts at the last second as well; shoves them away to where everything else that he doesn’t want to acknowledge as a fact goes in his mind.

“I win,” he says instead.

“Hm?” One of Neil’s eyebrows raise in question, but he doesn’t open his eyelids. 

“Ninety-seven,” Andrew says flatly in English, translating what Neil had said. French might not be his thing but he’s shared a bed with Neil long enough by now to pick up on some of the counting Neil will sometimes do in different languages at night. “You only have fifty-eight.”

Neil’s thumb doesn’t stop moving, but he turns his head a little and opens his eyes to look at Andrew’s bare arm again. For a split second Andrew panics, thinking Neil’s going to lean in and kiss his scars or something. Usually the level of attention Neil has been paying them tonight would already be enough for Andrew to want to wrap his hands around Neil’s neck and tighten the grip until the air cuts off, but—

Andrew was the one who had started it, this, tonight. 

They’d fallen onto the sheets earlier when Neil’s skin was still damp from his shower, and Andrew let his mind be as free as only fucking Neil can make him feel. Tongue as insistent as always against Neil’s own—‘always’ but only ever always so long as Neil breathes _yes_ against his mouth before parting his lips for him, welcoming Andrew inside the warm wetness of his mouth for hungry, deep kisses. Andrew circled his hands tightly around Neil’s wrists and moved them to press them down into the mattress above Neil’s head.

Andrew doesn’t want things.

He doesn’t need anything.

If he _did_ have a favourite place to be, though, it would be on top of Neil. When they’re both hard and Andrew kisses Neil with rough bites to his bottom lip whenever he thinks Neil deserves it, only then can Andrew briefly let himself fully appreciate how much he likes having the solid line of Neil’s body beneath him, how it’d be the perfect strong base to build a home on.

After their kisses weren’t enough anymore, once Andrew had ducked down to make Neil come in his mouth before moving back up the mattress to kiss him again as he came all over Neil’s abs himself, Andrew had been the one who grabbed one of Neil’s hands. He sat up against the headboard and pulled Neil’s arm across his lap, stared down at the red bumped skin before he started walking his fingertips across it _—burnmark, scar, scar, burnmark, scar—_ while counting, _one, two, three, four, five._

Neil had put his head down on the mattress next to Andrew’s side, close but not touching. Not until Andrew tangled his free hand in Neil’s hair and wordlessly yanked him up so he could rest with his cheek on Andrew’s thigh.

_“Gonna be up all night if you’re planning on counting all of them,”_ Neil had murmured when Andrew kept going, inspecting every place on Neil’s skin where someone has dared to hurt him.

_“Bet I have more than you do,”_ Andrew had said. _“Bet you couldn’t even count them all before you’d fall asleep.”_

It might have been full permission given from him first hand to study his scars closely, but that doesn’t mean Andrew isn’t fully prepared to shove Neil away and out of this bed right now if Neil dares to start acting like Andrew’s scars are something that needs tenderness and care.

Someone else made the red angry marks that Neil has to walk around with happen. If people want to stare at them, they’re staring at what he has survived and gotten through done by other people. 

Andrew’s faded-white but thick and obvious lines were put there by his own free will. If someone gets to see them, all they’re looking at is the ultimate proof of how weak he used to be, how he couldn’t even keep his mind and body separated enough not to let his feelings show back then. His scars are proof of something no one should ever get to see, something that’s not even meant to _exist._ To consider yourself worthless enough to hurt yourself, one needs the ability to feel something about yourself at all—something Andrew has no interest in allowing ever again. His scars will never stop being a reminder of a point in time when he was stupid enough not to have that strict self-control, the carefully developed ability of existing outside his own mind that has gotten him through life the past years, and he doesn’t need anyone’s fucking pity over his own past weaknesses.

Neil puts his head back down on Andrew’s thigh with a soft sigh before Andrew has time to yank his arm away, then closes his eyes again without doing anything else.

“Are you saying I should get kidnapped and tortured some more, then?” Neil murmurs. 

Andrew fists a hand in Neil’s bangs, keeping a steady grip as he tugs on them, but it’s not hard enough to make Neil open his eyes. “Ninety-eight, Neil,” he warns.

“Acknowledging how many scars I’d need on my left arm to win or just reminding me of the level of hatred you have for me at the moment?”

Another harsher tug on Neil’s hair, but still Neil barely reacts. 

“Ninety- _nine,”_ Andrew growls.

Neil tilts his head back to look up at him and Andrew can’t begin to describe how much he hates the small smile on Neil’s lips. He hates it as much as he hates being good at something, hates it even more than when he hated having feelings so much he had to press a knife to his skin to make it all go away. Most of all, he hates that despite whatever the fuck other people think of him, Andrew _is_ self-aware. Enough to know that the biggest reason he has for hating Neil is because of how he makes Andrew think about things that he was finally, _finally_ fine with not having or wanting or _needing_ anymore in his life until Neil dared to show up.

Neil gently slides his hand away from Andrew’s scarred arm completely and puts it next to Andrew’s leg on the mattress, then presses a soft kiss goodnight to Andrew’s hip. He doesn’t say anything, simply settles in comfortably with his cheek resting on Andrew’s thigh—like Andrew’s body is the solid foundation beneath Neil’s own torn down house and he would maybe want to try rebuilding it, too.

It’s not long before Neil’s breathing evens out, soft and steady and sound asleep.

Andrew glares down at him. His grip in Neil’s hair has loosened at some point, his hand now resting on top of Neil’s head as if he’s simply petting him, and Andrew fucking _hates_ him with every fibre of his being.

Wanting, needing, or thinking you deserve something are all equally stupid fantasies that he has no patience or desire for wasting his time and energy on.

He doesn’t want Neil.

That’s what he would say—has said, and always will say—if anyone ever dared to ask about it. Andrew doesn’t want him. But back when he was sure he could never have him, he also felt restless and furious and like something kept getting jammed into the deepest, darkest part of his chest where he knows his heart at least used to be at some point. 

He doesn’t need Neil. He doesn’t _need_ him, but if he lost him, if someone tried to take him from Andrew or ever hurt Neil again, then yes—Andrew would hurt them back in ways not even the most creative mass murderer any of them know of could imagine.

Andrew doesn’t deserve Neil, though.

That is the one single, simple truth that always quiets his mind. Wanting and needing things make people stupid; it makes them dream about something that can and will be taken away from them one day, and however good Andrew has gotten at shutting his own brain up over the years, he’s accepted that there’s always going to be background chatter trying to lure him into hoping for things again from time to time.

But he doesn’t deserve Neil.

There’s no _but_ or _what if_ that can twist that fact around into some stupidly hopeful thought.

He doesn’t deserve him.

Andrew looks down at his own arm, staring at the uneven mess of ninety-seven pale scars left there from the embarrassing too muchness of his own heart, and clenches both his jaw and his fist.

He drops his gaze back to Neil’s sleeping face, watches him for another moment, and then hesitantly starts to card his fingers softly through Neil’s hair, careful not to wake him.


End file.
